In 1603 John Ward led a mass desertion from the English navy, stole a ship and defected to the Ottoman Empire's outpost at Tunis. Allied with the pasha, Ward led Muslim soldiers and sailors in devastating attacks against Christian shipping. Wealthy as a lord, Ward purchased a palatial mansion in Tunis and presided over a scruffy band of English and European renegades.But Ward could not purchase a return to England. When his offers to trade gold for a pardon were re...

The Nordic Model of Digital Archiving explores the roots and strengths of Nordic digital archiving and proposes new directions to guide digital archivists in addressing the challenges posed by ever-changing digital technologies and the datafication of information and records.Digitization and born-digital records promise efficient and cost-effective solutions to everything from preservation of data to easy user access. However, digitization also poses challenges for archiva...

Steven High’s presidential address, delivered at York University in May 2023, grapples with many of the issues facing our discipline and what it means to be a historian in the present. Despite the extreme political polarization of our time, he expressed admiration at the courage of so many historians who continue to speak truth to power, even at considerable risk to themselves. He also addresses the structural violence of precarity within our discipline and what we as a professional associ...

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, despatched an invasion fleet to the island of Rhodes. This was the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths, and the ensuing battle for control of the Mediterranean would last sixty years.Empires of the Sea tells the story of this great contest. It is a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a ...

King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defense of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early sixth century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians.

'To write a book that makes the reader sit in a trance, lost in his passionate desire to pack a suitcase and go to the fabulous place - that, in the end, is something one would give a sack of nutmeg for' Philip Hensher, The SpectatorIn 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore on a remote island in the East Indies on a secret mission - to persuade the islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a fabulously val...

A humble laird from Largoshire, Andrew Wood's determination toavenge his father's murder by English pirates, led to his nationalrenown as a pirate-slayer.This brought him to the attention of King James III, who asked Woodto build up a number of captured vessels to form the nucleus of anational fleet. Such was his success, that the King eventually promotedhim to become Baron of Largo and Lord High Admiral of Scotland.Admiral Wood's bold def...

Just over a century ago, Our Island Story entranced a nation's children by telling their history in stories. Short, simply written chapters, packed with living characters and thrilling action - and illustrated with vivid colour pictures - illuminate all the main events from Britain's earliest days to the end of Victoria's reign. And its glorious fusion of myth and legend with sober fact - Canute and King Arthur with Cromwell and the Indian Mutiny - is as seductive now as it ever was.

'[An] important book to grace your bookshelves.' – JoeAnn Ricca, Founder of the Richard III Foundation, Inc.Bosworth Field saw the two great dynasties of the day clash on the battlefield: the reigning House of York, led by Richard III, against the rising House of Tudor, led by Henry Tudor, soon to become Henry VII.On 22 August 1485 this penultimate battle in the Wars of the Roses was fought, with the might of the Yorkists ...

In this remarkable reconstruction of an eighteenth-century woman's extraordinary and turbulent life, historian Linda Colley not only tells the story of Elizabeth Marsh, one of the most distinctive travelers of her time, but also opens a window onto a radically transforming world.Marsh was conceived in Jamaica, lived in London, Gibraltar, and Menorca, visited the Cape of Africa and Rio de Janeiro, explored eastern and southern India, and was held captive at the court of the sultan of Morocc...

This is the story of a plain silver chalice from the first century AD that now rests in the heart of England. From its momentous beginnings as the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, and as the vessel used to catch His blood at the Crucifixion, to its unrecognised discovery in the late nineteenth century, the chalice has passed through the hands of saints, crusaders, kings, queens, Templar knights and 'Guardians.' This account revisits the beginnings of the Knights Temp...